"Updated with the material that instructors want, Dinosaurs continues to make science exciting and understandable to non-science majors through its narrative of scientific concepts rather than endless facts. Now with new material on pterosaurs, an expanded section of the evolution of the dinosaurs, and new photographs to help students engage with geology, natural history, and evolution. The authors ground the text in the language of modern evolutionary biology, phylogenetic systematics, and teach students to examine the paleontology of dinosaurs exactly as the professionals in the field do using these methods to reconstruct dinosaur relationships"-- Provided by publisher.

Contents:

Why a natural history of dinosaurs? pt. 1. Reaching back in time. To catch a dinosaur ; Dinosaur days ; Who's related to whom - and how do we know? ; Who are the dinosaurs? pt. 2. Ornithischia : armored, horned, and duckbilled dinosaurs. Thyreophorans : the armor-bearers ; Marginocephalia : bumps, bosses, and beaks ; Ornithopoda : the tuskers, antelopes and "mighty ducks" of the Mesozoic pt. 3. Saurischia : meat, might, and magnitude. Sauropodomorpha : the big, the bizarre, and the majestic ; Theropoda. 1, Nature red in tooth and claw ; Theropoda. 2, The origin of birds ; Theropoda. 3, Early birds pt. 4. Endothermy, endemism, origin, and extinction. Dinosaur thermoregulation : some like it hot ; The flowering of the Mesozoic ; A history of paleontology through ideas ; Dinosaurs : in the beginning ; The Cretaceous-Tertiary extinction : the frill is gone.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and indexes.

Local notes:

Acquired for the Penn Libraries with assistance from the Cornelia Dodderer Fund.